Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Just Conjecturin', Volume 28: The Brainwashdodo Correspondence

Continuing from the last time out, it was last fall when I was contacted by an anonymous source via e-mail who offered to share with me a few documents relating to the mysterious appearance/disappearance of a poster called "brainwashdodo" on the 2+2 discussion forums.

I'd already had brainwashdodo ID'd to me by this time, but I'd held back from publishing it, seeking confirmation, not wanting to accuse an anonymous man of blackmail without, as the saying goes, checking it twice. This new source and I tested each other on a few things before he decided to trust me and send three documents, two of which were clearly related to brainwashdodo. One of those was an e-mail exchange between Cereus CEO Paul Leggett and brainwashdodo, and the other was the work resume of the real man behind the "brainwashdodo", a Costa Rican former Cereus CR worker named Zoltan Rozsa.

But of course, as I also mentioned last time, it was still an anonymous source and the documents came with some strings attached. Quoting from an August 30, 2010 email:

This stays between us until I say, ok? you can talk about it just don't show the files this is the first part of trusting each other. The things I have been telling you are not what I have heard, I was there on everything[....]

I will look for the first part of the email about Paul offering the 80,00.00 because when others got involved he started to play dumb and act like he was turning it over to the authorities,he tried to intimidate Zoltan by sending his bodyguards over to Zoltans house and set in their car out front.

I've made a conscientious effort throughout my writing on the UB/AP scandals to protect my sources, and this was an anonymous source to boot, which made me more than a bit suspicious, as mentioned last time out. It seemed legit, but I really, really wanted to be sure, and I also wanted to check on the potential legal issues involved, though the crimes the e-mails seemed to point to all were alleged to have occurred in Costa Rica, per other accounts of the matter I had heard.

But it was still worth going slowly, and then around the holidays real-life matters intervened. (Hence my hiatus.) But between last fall and now, two things have changed:

1) Travis Makar, generally described as Russ Hamilton's computer guy, came forward last week with much of the information I already possessed regarding brainwashdodo's identity and motives. While there was a chance that Makar had indeed been the anonymous source that sent me the files -- and no, I don't know if he was -- it was still a second real, verifiable person that had come out with the same story. So it was good to go, in theory...;

2) And when I tried to contact my original anonymous source to verify and ask for permission, I received this bounceback:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

-------@------.com

Account closed, e-mail bounced. I can't keep a continuing promise to someone who has broken the lines of communication. Misquoting from National Treasure, which was on USA again last week, "The status quo had changed."

So, without further ado, the complete transcript of the partial e-mail exchange I had sent to me, between Rozsa and Leggett. The file is in its original form except for my redacting of the actual e-mail addresses, meaning it reads backwards, with the last messages first and the earlier ones at the bottom. The smoking gun appears well down, the same message published earlier today by DonkDown Poker showing Leggett's apparent willingness to negotiate, but for a lesser price than what was seemingly paid later on to Rozsa.

The complete transcript follows. Note that Rozsa's a native Hungarian:

I was thinking about it over the weekend and I have decided to not pay the extortion money. I will not participate in the extortion because our company has nothing to hide and I think it will increase the chances of future extortion against our company.

I have submitted reports of your crimes to the OIJ. I do not think you are a completely bad person and I am hoping that you do not release any of our companies information because it will leave me with no choice except to do everything possible to prosecute everyone involved in these crimes.

Paul This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

[address redacted]

Technical details of permanent failure:PERM_FAILURE: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 sorry, your envelope sender is in my badmailfrom list (#5.7.1) (state 14).

Believe me, I am way more confused than you are right now. Your way of ----- Message truncated -----Hi Zoltan,

If you are saying that you are giving up on the extortion and confirming that you will not disclose the information you took from us... I am very happy to hear this.

I realize that you do not trust me, and obviously it is impossible for me to trust you.

Before you decide to disclose any information, I would just like to reaffirm that if you do release confidential company information, I will be forced to involve the police in this situation. However, I would prefer to exhaust all avenues of negotiation prior to doing this. I realize that money is important to you and the confidentiality of our information is important to us.

If you want to meet I would be willing to give you a reasonable amount of money (much smaller than the amount you requested), but I need you convince me that day that you will bring all of the important information, and you will stop with the threats and illegal activities against our company.

Regards,

Paul

On 7/1/08 1:32 PM, "poker ass" [address redacted] wrote:Hi,

I tried to respond 22 hrs ago, but you have blocked my other email addresses. The message was sent below.

……………………………..

Hi Paul,

Believe me, I am way more confused than you are right now. Your way of handling this matter, thought me a lot about you, the most important one maybe, that I can not really trust you. It is hard for me to tell you, how to proceed, which you always politely ask me in the end of your messages. I learned, if you say there will be a meeting, than five more email/text message lather you will confirm that the priority of our meeting is very low. Than stop communicate.

I am sorry, but I can no longer be your partner of arrange meetings, or wait for a business proposals. If you have any desire to meet me, you will do it in a casual way as a friend. Give me a call when you think it's appropriate, than we will sit down for a cheviche. I will never again go to meet you in a street, or any junk food rest, had enough of those.

If you wish to sit down with me for a talk, this is how I would like to proceed.

Regards,

Zoltan

2008/6/30 Paul [address redacted]:- Idézett szöveg elrejtése -

Hi Zoltan,

I am currently in Canada. I am not back in CR until Wednesday morning. I am very confused by your recent emails and I do not understand what you want or are trying to achieve at this point. I am not concerned or scared by any threats that you send to me, which I think you have learned by now. However, I am willing to meet you and try to sort out this mess once and for all.

Technical details of permanent failure:PERM_FAILURE: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 sorry, your envelope sender is in my badmailfrom list (#5.7.1) (state 14).

Recent events have demonstrated to me that getting out the true and full stories of the AP and UB cheating scandals is going to entail significant legal effort, in addition to all the legwork of the past several years. Such is the nature of the beast. While I've resisted doing so for years, it's finally time to ask: Do you have some spare change to contribute to the cause? I'm going to be needing to mount both offensive and defensive legal efforts in the months ahead, and any contributions to cover these expenses are gratefully appreciated.

Who am I? A veteran writer/editor with decades of published writing credits, and at one time the Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews.com (though these days, "Tony G" is a dirty word to me). Currently continuing work on a book on the AP and UB scandals, to be published by Dimat Publishing in late 2012 or early 2013.